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Just one night….

January 29, 2009 by Véronique Bergeron 4 Comments

An interesting – if mortifying – article in today’s Citizen. One that hits particularly close to home: our family enforces a strict no-sleepover policy from birth until making your own mortgage/rent payments. Our children are mostly okay with it… except when they’re not. In a nutshell:

“Children kick up a big fuss. Parents need to get more backbone.”

Sleepover invitations start with school. Yes, that’s 4 years old in Ontario. When my older children were young, the no-sleepover policy was mostly based on self-preservation: I didn’t want to feel like I had to return the favor. Plus, who needs a cranky, sleep-deprived 6-year-old? Really. But as my children grew older, my concern moved over to the parenting skills and judgment of my children’s friends’ parents. What do they consider an age-appropriate game? An age-appropriate TV show? An age-appropriate movie? An appropriate age to be left alone in the house while the parents go out? An appropriate way to spend adult time? Do I want to find out the next day, when my child comes home, and tells me that Jimmy’s Dad turns into a screaming drunk after 9 pm? What is the first comment everybody makes when a family turns up dead at the hand of another family member? “They looked so normal!” I don’t trust anybody’s definition of normal but my own, especially where my children’s well-being is concerned.

As my older children crawl into adolescence, the issue of sexual health, morality and behavior comes to the fore. At the age where children are slowly growing discernment skills, hormones come a-kicking and your child’s safety no longer depends on your parenting skills or how well he or she has internalized family values but also on how well their peers have been brought up. In today’s culture of entitlement, there is nothing I trust less. Reading the article mentioned above, I realized that the three parenting dilemmas presented in the introduction were not so many dilemmas but a progression of the first dilemma into adolescence and adulthood. As a parent, where do you draw the line? Notice how the parents featured in the article relate their “decision” to allow sleepovers not so much as a decision but as a progression from one thing to the other. Do I want to leave my child’s sexual health in the expert hands of parents who are cornered into compromise by their teens? Even for one night?

That’s how it works at my house. What about yours?

___________________________

Patricia adds: I don’t  have a general policy against sleep-overs. I just find that very rarely are they a practical fit with my kids’ schedules, my firm belief that no one can deal with life unless they’ve had a good night’s sleep and my general reluctance to have to reciprocate.

It goes without saying that any family my kids is staying with will be one which I know very well. And I feel pretty confident that any of these mothers and fathers would laugh hysterically at the very idea of a co-ed sleepover for 12- or 13-year-olds.

Honestly, this is not exactly rocket science. “The dear little androgynous puppies” all snuggled up in the rec room. Does that really sound like a good idea to anyone?

__________________________

Rebecca says: This hasn’t been an issue yet in our family – nobody is old enough yet to want to sleep away from the parental home. Since the question hasn’t arisen, I haven’t wrestled with it. What I do worry about sometimes are plain old simple playdates. While one devoutly hopes that daytime playdates between elementary school children won’t involve anything remotely like sex, there are lots of other matters in which other kids’ parents might make different judgments than we do. This applies to trivial things, like sugary snacks and whether or not to call adults by their first name, but it also applies to more important issues, like how much TV or video gaming is permitted, what specific shows or games are allowed, and the influence of others in the house, like older siblings, who may behave and speak in ways that you wouldn’t normally want your child to be exposed to.

One doesn’t want to raise hermits, but on the other hand, it is depressing to put a great deal of effort into insulating your child from a particularly noxious trend, only to find out that in ten minutes’ conversation with a classmate, they have learned all about the latest inappropriate TV show/song/gossip or whatever.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: co-ed, Parenting, sexuality, sleepovers

What am I supposed to do with my wardrobe now?

May 25, 2008 by Andrea Mrozek Leave a Comment

Time to go shopping, I guess. In the Weekend Post yesterday: “Have you heard the news? The ‘ho’ look is over.”

Call me crazy, but I believe that there might just be more to being a woman than prancing around dressed up like a Stepford blow-up doll. Non? In my experience you gals are highly idiosyncratic creatures whose true essence is riddled with subtlety and nuance. Your sizzling sexuality is only one aspect of a complex and intriguing picture.

If it’s true that this trend is over–not a moment too soon.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: "Don't you look stunning" sexuality, clothes, culture, dress, modesty, sexuality, Simon Doonan

They’re all sea monkeys

May 12, 2008 by Véronique Bergeron Leave a Comment

Having recently encountered some serious money ($50), my son Kurt headed to the toy store for his bi-yearly Lego fix. He came home beyond excited announcing that for the first time since learning about the buying power of money he did not buy Lego! Instead, he bought Sea Monkeys. Yes, Sea Monkeys. Complete with a plastic tank, crystallized eggs and fertilizer. Learning that Sea Monkeys were indeed a kind of shrimp, Liesl and I got busy contemplating how we could eventually eat them (would they be better BBQ’d or sauced?) when Kurt, oblivious to our culinary musings, announced that Sea Monkeys could reproduce in captivity. He added, lifting his eyes from the owner’s manual: “For those who don’t want to reproduce, the kit includes a special mating powder!” That was too good to pass. I replied: “Hey, be careful not to sneeze in it near your classmates!” Once he picked himself off the floor laughing, Kurt blurted: “It will be like the day “Quinn” was approaching all the girls in class telling them: “there’s a nice couch in the teachers’ lounge!!!”

Argh. Blah. Speechless…

Where do kids get their pick-up lines these days?

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: Children, sea monkeys, sexuality

Excellent Ottawa Citizen letters page today

March 17, 2008 by Andrea Mrozek Leave a Comment

Why such a good page, you ask? Because there are two ProWomanProLifers on it all on the same happy day. Very much unplanned. My letter, here and Véronique’s here.

___________________

Rebecca adds: The insistence that if one opposes abortion, one must support birth control is a fine example of question begging. (For the record, while I reject the notion that abortion is a consequence-free private decision that is the prerogative only of the woman involved, I believe birth control to be none of anyone’s business but the couple’s, informed by medical, theological and other considerations that matter to them. Although I do have some serious qualms about the medical basis for a number of birth control methods.) But the argument takes as a given that a) sex can be severed from reproduction and b) perfect birth control, or close enough to perfect, is achievable. Neither of these is true.

The world would be a happier, better, saner place if fewer teenagers (and, dare I say it, unmarried adults) had sex. This is partly the case because of the inevitability of unplanned pregnancies. No birth control method is 100% effective; sterilization comes pretty close, but even then, whether through a faulty procedure or natural regeneration, sterilizations sometimes don’t work. And the numbers typically given for the effectiveness of the pill, diaphragm, condom and so on are usually “perfect use” statistics; in reality, very few users reproduce these circumstances, and the “”real world” reliability of most birth control methods is much lower. This may tie in well with certain political or religious views, but it is not a political issue or a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact.

So we create a culture in which sex is separated first from reproduction, then from marriage, and finally, in the age of the hook-up, from commitment or even affection. We raise a generation with the mantra of safe sex (omitting the fact that some diseases can be transmitted even while using a condom) and provide them with flawed tools to prevent conception. And inevitably, we end up with unplanned pregnancies, men leaving smoke behind them in the manner of the Road Runner as they head for the hills, and women convinced that their lives are ruined, who try to flee by terminating their pregnancies.

The fact that only abstinence is guaranteed to prevent pregnancy is also a matter of fact, not opinion. Young women (and men) who think their lives will be ruined, or (less melodramatically) recognize that premature and single parenthood will radically alter their plans, should keep this in mind. As a society, we can have “consequence-free” sex or we can value all life. We can’t do both, and no matter how hard we try (and many people have tried very hard indeed) we can’t sever sexuality from reproduction. Which is, I believe, part of the teaching of the Church on this matter.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: Archbishop Prendergast, Birth control, Ottawa Citizen, sexuality, Terrence Prendergast

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